The Dark Side of Social Media – Part 1

This post covers the theory behind my master thesis ‘The Dark Side of Social Media’. My master study (in psychology) is about how social media affects the users. I will write about what science has found out so far and introduce my study – join the conversation!

Deutsche Version weiter unten | German version below

A while ago I begged everyone I knew via social media to help me by participating in my master study ‘The Dark Side of Social Media’. I received an incredible response from 350+ people – thank you guys for being amazing and enabling me to perform this study <3

To be honest, at the time I posted the study, I didn’t know what would be ‘dark’ about it. And while I personally believe that humans are very adaptable to whatever is thrown at them, I do think it is good to evaluate every new way in which we evolve. And social media is changing us at a societal level right now. While I am not here to try to find an answer to the question, if humankind benefits from social media or not, I am trying to help finding out what may change for one person.

Black Mirror – a great show about social media!

Writing all this about my own master thesis sounds so narcissistic to me. And that’s funny because narcissism is a part of the ‘Dark triad of the personality’ (alongside psychopathy and machiavellism) and part of my study. Even though I feel like stroking my own back by writing about this, some people who participated in this study asked for feedback about the results. So here it goes!

This first part of this post will consist of an introduction of the topic and a short summary of the results other researchers found. Part 2 will be about my study in general and my results in specific.

First things first, I should probably tell you that this study wasn’t only focused on social media. The other focus of this study was the fear of missing out, or FOMO. If you haven’t heard of it, FOMO is probably exactly what you think it might be. It’s an anxiety that you’re missing out on fun or cool experiences while believing that others have so much more fulfilling lives. I thoroughly recommend watching this hilarious ‘movie trailer’ to truly understand what FOMO is (It only takes a minute)!

Social media can intensify the undesirable feeling of missing out on something. But people on social media are not very honest. We all post polished pictures of carefully curated content – and NOT realistic portrayals of everyday lives. However, when we’re home alone scrolling through the Instagram feed, it’s easy to think that everyone else’s life is so much more exciting. In this moment, we don’t consider that (almost) everyone chooses the content presented carefully. And I won’t even start discussing photo editing and photo filters…

Now, what does science say about social media and how it affects us? I would simply say, science isn’t sure about social media. Social media is still a relatively new topic. There are lots of results but to be honest, we need hundreds more and big meta-analyses to come to any kind of conclusion. But let’s talk about what most studies found out so far.

The show Broad City joined the FOMO-conversation too!

While social media is meant for communication (at least it was, at some point), this is not it’s only purpose. But let’s talk about the communicational aspect first. Social media is a good outlet for people who long for more social connectedness or for shy/introverted people who want to train their social skills. More extroverted people may gain from amplification of social benefits. However, a ‘rich-get-richer’ model states that social media is only socially fulfilling for those who already have a good social support system offline. This is why some authors believe that social media usage can cause loneliness or even depressive symptomatic. At this point the association is not clear. Only thing I am sure of is that it’s possible that social media causes loneliness but it doesn’t have to.

A lot of research has gone into social media addiction. First things first, social media addiction is not a psychiatric disease according to diagnostic manuals DSM or ICD – this means it is no ‘official’ disease. On a side note, burnout is no official disease either – doesn’t mean it isn’t real.
Most authors (for only one exception I could find) are pretty sure that social media is potentially addictive. I am personally certain that it is. The results of my study, personal experiences and the literature has convinced me of it. This would mean that some people can become addicted to social media just like others become addicted to alcohol or drugs. When addicts aren’t able to ‘use’, they will be unhappy and experience negative side effects. ‘Side-effects’ of social media addiction (as described in the literature) are loss over control of time spend on social media, sleep problems, neglect of significant activities such as work, school, relationships and deterioration of academic performance.

Now, why do people love to use social media so much? It’s pretty simple actually! At their core, most social media tools use a simple reward-system. If you post a nice selfie or other quality content, you will instantly receive positive feedback via Likes or comments. Feels great, doesn’t it? We will continue using what makes us feel better (about ourselves). BUT: Ever uploaded a not-so-great-selfie and didn’t receive as much positive feedback? Did feel shitty, right? Everyone else seems to think that you’re not having the best day – damn! So, keep up the good posts and receive some nice little instant gratification for it, every time you need it.

A theory of social media and selfies

Besides the reward-system another interesting aspect is how social media works for narcissistic people. Social media is a great outlet for self-promotional behavior and a great way to strengthen your feelings of self-worth. So of course, there’s a connection between narcissism and social media activity – we’ll talk about that in part 2.

All in all, I decided to record responses about social media addiction, FOMO, the personality (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion/Introversion, Agreeableness, emotional instability), loneliness, behavioral inhibition/activation, narcissism, sensation seeking, psychological well-being, delay of gratification and envy. I will explain everything in part 2! Until then I challenge everyone to post a really bad selfie on Instagram. Ignore the (lack of) responses and rather feel great about being brave and filter-free.

Sources:There are literally more resources than I can list here. A full list of sources as well as a complete depiction of the theory and my results can be found in my master thesis, when finished. Contact me if you’re interested.

Thanks man! Always happy to get some feedback. I am extremely skeptical about social media, I love the benefits they provides but I feel like it is changing us too. And not in the best ways I suppose. Also I believe that social media is the rest our society is so image- and success-based.
I will have part 2 online in a couple of days! Would be very happy to hear from you again!

Will certainly keep an eye out for part two! Social media certainly has it\’s benefits with keeping in touch with some people we normally couldn\’t keep in touch with but with it we are creating online personas subconsciously, I found myself posting my best photos in the hope for likes and that\’s when I knew social media was changing my mind. I feel we can never be content with ourselves when we go on to social media and compare ourselves to others.

Agreed ! Would appreciate it man if you\’d view my post about how we live and social media! Only new and haven\’t really much of a clue if I\’m doing anything right, I just know I\’ve a passion for life and enjoy writing

Social media is changing society for sure. It will be interesting to see the impact of social media in 30 years. I wonder if it will have been the experiment gone wrong? Thanks for linking me btw. 🙂
Danny

Hey dray, Thanks for the input. Of course, I liked your post 🙂 I don’t think social media is an experiment. I guess that it’s here to stay… unfortunately probably. I think we were much happier not knowing everything about everyone. But that’s just me.
Ben

I read a quote by Steven Furtick talking about social media and feelings of insecurity. \”The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.\” All we see of others is them at their best.

Mhh nice quote – I might use that for my thesis. And it fits perfectly. I\’m gonna talk about social comparison, envy and FOMO in the second part. Also about missing honesty on social media, how fitting for my blog^^

True…. Humanity may never be the same as before again. I\’m very skeptical about that change because social media and smart phones add a lot of pressure and negative affect to life. We\’ll see I guess…